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CSS 340

Spring 2010

 Ending the Cold War

Professor Ronald W. Schatz

Course description:

        In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the relative stability that had prevailed between the United States and Soviet Union since the end of the Cuban missile crisis (and, more fundamentally, since the East and West German governments were formed in 1949) broke down. By mid-1982, well-informed figures in both Washington and Moscow feared nuclear war. Hostility between the two governments only intensified over the succeeding months.

        Yet by the end of 1988 the Cold War had ended and a new mode of cooperation between the Soviet and U.S. leaders began to emerge. How and why did this profound transformation occur? The tutorial will concentrate on this question. It will call into question both the liberal and the conservative explanations that have reigned in the United States over the past two decades.

Reading assignments:

 Vladislav M. Zubov, A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from

   Stalin to  Gorbachev (2009)  

John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American

    National Security Policy during the Cold War (rev. ed., 2005)

Kiron K. Skinner, ed., Turning Points in Ending the Cold War (2008)

Jack F. Matlock, Jr., Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (2004)

Pavel Palazchenko, My Years with Gorbachev and Shevardnadze: The Memoir of

    a Soviet  Interpreter (1997) – selected chapters

Anatoly S. Chernyaev, My Six Years with Gorbachev (2000) – selected chapters

        
        Plus selected chapters of other volumes, scholarly articles, and primary documents

Writing assignments:

         Weekly essays

 Evaluation:  

         Participation in discussion (one-third), essays (two-thirds)

Additional comments:

Open to CSS juniors only

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